[tor-project] Anti-censorship team meeting notes, 2023-11-02 [FIXED]

Hey everyone!

[FIXED]: In the last email, next meeting date was not appropriately updated. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Here are our meeting logs:
http://meetbot.debian.net/tor-meeting/2023/tor-meeting.2023-11-02-15.57.html

And our meeting pad:

Anti-censorship work meeting pad

···

--------------------------------
Anti-censorship
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Next meeting: Thursday, Nov 09 16:00 UTC
Facilitator: onyinyang

Weekly meetings, every Thursday at 16:00 UTC, in #tor-meeting at OFTC
(channel is logged while meetings are in progress)

This week's Facilitator: shelikhoo

== Goal of this meeting ==

Weekly check-in about the status of anti-censorship work at Tor.
Coordinate collaboration between people/teams on anti-censorship at the
Tor Project and Tor community.

== Links to Useful documents ==

      \* Our anti\-censorship roadmap:
              \* Roadmap:https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/anti-censorship/-/boards
      \* The anti\-censorship team's wiki page:

*Home · Wiki · The Tor Project / Anti-censorship / Team · GitLab
* Past meeting notes can be found at:
* The tor-project Archives
* Tickets that need reviews: from sponsors, we are working on:
* All needs review tickets:
*Merge requests · Anti-censorship · GitLab
* Sponsor 96 <-- meskio, shell, onyinyang, cohosh
*Sponsor 96: Rapid Expansion of Access to the Uncensored Internet through Tor in China, Hong Kong, & Tibet · The Tor Project · GitLab
* Sponsor 150 <-- meskio working on it
*Issues · Anti-censorship · GitLab

== Announcements ==

== Discussion ==

 \* Fastly to block domain fronting in February 2024 https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/anti-censorship-team/2023-October/000328.html
     \* azure is closing domain front support next month
     \* there are some alternatives to domain fronting we could use \(ampcache or tapdance\), but it might be trickier to integrate with moat
     \* cohosh will investigate if cnd77, netlify or akamai are alternatives we could use
     \* let&#39;s stress tests ampcache using it in one of our default bridges
     \* we can add metrics to the broker to know if the clients come from ampcache or domain front
 \* don&#39;t reject unrestricted client if there are no restricted proxies https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snowflake/-/merge_requests/187
     \* we&#39;ll merge it, it should not affect our deployment
 \(New: Nov 2\)
 \* Maybe move to use a private pad?

== Actions ==

== Interesting links ==

     \* webtunnel testers call out:
             \* https://forum.torproject.org/t/call-for-testers-webtunnel-a-new-way-to-bypass-censorship-with-tor-browser/9855
     \* blog post of the sponsor 30 code audit
             \* https://blog.torproject.org/security-audit-report-tor-browser-ooni/
     \* New paper PTPerf: On the Performance Evaluation of Tor Pluggable Transports: https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3618257.3624817

== Reading group ==

     \* We will discuss &quot;On Precisely Detecting Censorship Circumvention in Real\-World Networks&quot; on November 9
             \* https://www.robgjansen.com/publications/precisedetect-ndss2024.html
              \* Questions to ask and goals to have:
                      \* What aspects of the paper are questionable?
                      \* Are there immediate actions we can take based

on this work?
* Are there long-term actions we can take based
on this work?
* Is there future work that we want to call out
in hopes that others will pick it up?

== Updates ==

Name:
This week:
- What you worked on this week.
Next week:
- What you are planning to work on next week.
Help with:
- Something you need help with.

cecylia (cohosh): 2023-11-02
Last week:
- continued lox integration with tor browser
- New Firefox CSP blocks WebAssembly.instantiate() (#34) · Issues · The Tor Project / Anti-censorship / lox · GitLab
- Changed how proxy stats logging works
- Proxy hourly stats did not actually happen during that hour (#40302) · Issues · The Tor Project / Anti-censorship / Pluggable Transports / Snowflake · GitLab
- Reviewed addition of prometheus metrics to lox
- Add metrics to lox distributor (!63) · Merge requests · The Tor Project / Anti-censorship / lox · GitLab
This week:
- lox tor browser UX integration
- follow up on conjure reliability issues
- visualize and write up some snowflake shadow simulation results
Needs help with:

dcf: 2023-11-02
Last week:
- snowflake CDN bookkeeping Changes · Snowflake costs · Wiki · The Tor Project / Anti-censorship / Team · GitLab
Next week:
- revise encapsulation.ReadData redesign to return an error in the case of a short buffer Have encapsulation.ReadData read into a provided buffer (!154) · Merge requests · The Tor Project / Anti-censorship / Pluggable Transports / Snowflake · GitLab
- open issue to have snowflake-client log whenever KCPInErrors is nonzero Deploy snowflake-server for QueuePacketConn buffer reuse fix (#40260) (#40262) · Issues · The Tor Project / Anti-censorship / Pluggable Transports / Snowflake · GitLab
- parent: Improve bug discovery process (#40267) · Issues · The Tor Project / Anti-censorship / Pluggable Transports / Snowflake · GitLab
- open issue to disable /debug endpoint on snowflake broker
Before EOY 2023:
- move snowflake-02 to new VM
Help with:

meskio: 2023-10-26
Last week:
- test the whatsapp bot (rdsys#147)
- investiage a failure on telegram bot, was on applications side (onionsproutsbot#54)
- some lox merge request reviews (lox!62 !68)
Next week:
- set up staging server for rdsys (rdsys#170)

Shelikhoo: 2023-11-02
Last Week:
- Work on snowflake performance improvement(WIP):Files · dev-speedwithudp · shelikhoo / Snowflake · GitLab
- Restart broker without proxy churn measurements Restart broker without proxy churn measurements (#40295) · Issues · The Tor Project / Anti-censorship / Pluggable Transports / Snowflake · GitLab
- Merge request reviews
Next Week/TODO:
- Write Tor Spec for Armored URL (continue)
- Merge request reviews

onyinyang: 2023-11-02
Last week(s):
- Finished up metrics
- Added functionality to handle blocked bridges in a single
location for MVP
- Started work on telegram distributor bot for Lox
This week:
- Continue work on Lox telegram bot
- Hackweek: Docs for Lox Improve Lox Documentation (#20) · Issues · The Tor Project / Community / Hackweek · GitLab
- Fix flakey test if time

     \(long term things were discussed at the meeting\!\):https://pad.riseup.net/p/tor-ac-community-azaleas-room-keep
                      \- brainstorming grouping strategies for Lox

buckets (of bridges) and gathering context on how types of bridges are
distributed/use in practice
Question: What makes a bridge usable for a
given user, and how can we encode that to best ensure we're getting the
most appropriate resources to people?
1. Are there some obvious grouping
strategies that we can already consider?
e.g., by PT, by bandwidth (lower
bandwidth bridges sacrificed to open-invitation buckets?), by locale (to
be matched with a requesting user's geoip or something?)
2. Does it make sense to group 3
bridges/bucket, so trusted users have access to 3 bridges (and untrusted
users have access to 1)? More? Less?